Forbes columnist Steven Salzberg and author-investigator Joe Nickell will each be awarded the 2012 Robert P. Balles Prize in Critical Thinking, to be presented by the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry at the CFI Summit in October.

Uncovering Secret Messages

Among my many interests as a boy was cryptography—the study of codes, ciphers, and other secret writings. I sent and received nighttime Morse code messages
by flashlight between neighbors’ houses and mine, made and solved cryptograms, used my forensic chemistry lab to make various invisible inks and developers, and even compiled a treatise on the subject (Nickell n.d.). I was influenced by Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Gold-Bug” and Sir Arthur Conan
Doyle’s Sher­lock Holmes story, “The Adventure of the Dancing Men,” and later by Helen Fouché Gaines’s textbook Cryptanalysis (1956), among other
writings.

When I grew up, I renewed my interest in secret messages through investigating a number of historical mysteries as well as during ten years of research for
my magnum opus, Pen, Ink, and Evidence: A Study of Writing and Writing Materials for the Penman, Collector, and Document Detective (1990). Thomas
Parrish was once kind enough to pen an inscription in a copy of his excellent book, The American Code­breakers (1986), “To Joe Nickell—a cracker
of all ciphers.” He gives me too much credit, but here, anyway, are abstracts of some of my interesting cases, from the trivial to the profound.

Secret Posts

One little secret message I came across in an antique store had already been revealed. It was on a postcard, penned in tiny script in the little box
reserved for the postage stamp. The stamp had been carefully removed, obviously by the recipient, exposing the hidden writing. I was so taken by the find
that I searched the remaining large collection of postcards in the store and found a few others—all clearly from the same sender.

The hidden-under-the-stamp messages were simply miniscule love notes. One consisted of rows of little X’s (a popular shorthand for kisses), while another
asked, “Do you you still love this bad boy?” The cards, postmarked between 1911 and 1913 were addressed to a young lady at a Virginia girls’ school
(Nickell 1990, 177). Charming!

Another postcard, found on a different occasion, bore a curious-looking script. However, it proved to be an innocuous message, easily read by noting the
picture side of the card. It depicted a lady before a mirror and was accompanied by the printed couplet, “This message is for you my dear—/Your looking
glass will make it clear” (Nickell 1990, 177). (For a discussion of Leonardo Da Vinci’s famous mirror handwriting, see my “Deciphering Da Vinci’s Real
Codes,” Nickell 2007).

A ‘Ju-Ju’ Message

Sometimes a message is hidden in plain sight. In researching the case of a devil-baby mummy that I encountered in a Toronto curio shop and that later
proved bogus, I came across a published photo of a pair of similar creatures, their arms folded in the repose of death. A sign affixed to the creatures’
coffin proclaimed: “These shrunken mummified figures were found in a crude tomblike cave on the island of Haiti in 1740 by a party of French marines. They
are supposed to be the remains of a lost tribe of ‘Ju-Ju’ or Devil Men—who, after death, followed a custom of shrinking & mummifying the dead. Are they
real? We don’t know, but . . . X-Rays showed skin, horn, & hooves human!” Astonishingly, however, there was no mention of skeletons, suggesting
that—like the Toronto devil-baby mummy—the figures were fabricated (Nickell 2011, 148–149).

Painted beneath the sign were these mumbo-jumbo words:

YENOH M’I DLOC!

My cryptanalytical interests were piqued, and I soon divined the meaning. Can you decipher it yourself before reading further?

I discovered that the text was the simplest form of a transposition cipher, one in which the actual letters of the secret message are rearranged in some
fashion. In this in­stance, it is only necessary to read each word backward in turn to reveal a witty commentary on the creatures’ nakedness: “Honey I’m
Cold!” Exclamation point indeed.

Encoded Book

Figure 1. The cryptic text in an old book soon yielded up its secrets.

In 1985 my old friend, Canadian writer and bibliophile George Fetherling, sent me copies of some pages from a small 1948 book titled SENATOR, the text of
which was printed in a strange sort of code or cipher (Figure 1). George wanted to know what this intriguing work was all about—and so did I!

I set to work, immersing myself in the mysterious text. Soon, I recognized that at least some of the apparent words were indeed words, only they had been
abbreviated—mostly by removing the vowels. (Thus whr=“where,” stn=“station,” etc.). Also, some consonants were dropped, particularly double ones (so that
rgt=“right” and al=“all”). In addition, some common words were replaced by symbols (such as “£” for “Lodge” and @ for “and” [not for “at,” which was itself
“a,” although “a” could also represent “a” itself.) Finally, some of the abbreviations were just acronyms (hence, MA=“Master at Arms”). In short, the text
is a very simple form of code. (A code consists of substitutes not just for letters, as in a simple cipher, but for groups of letters, words, or even
entire phrases or concepts.)

In beginning to decode the text, and reading phrases and whole clauses (“My station is at the right and front of the Cc [Chancelor?]),” I saw that it
concerned a lodge, various officers, and elements of ritual and mystery. I suspected it was the product of some secret order such as the Freemasons, soon
realizing that “KOP” in the text clearly referred to a similar fraternal and benevolent society, the Knights of Pythias. This was founded in 1864 in
Washington, DC. (“Knights” 1960; Ken­nedy 1904). Various terms in the text are consistent with Pythian use. (Although the book lacked publishing
information, and a standard bibliographic search was fruitless, for this publication CFI Libraries Director Tim Binga was later able to use online sources
to confirm the KOP origin.)

The book’s title page bears a brief message of a different type. It reads:

Can you decipher it? Quickly cover the following explanation and try your hand.

You should have little trouble, since you have already been introduced to simple transposition ciphers like this. However, instead of reading each word
backward in turn, you begin with the word in all capitals (which is, of course, “admonition”), then go to the end and read the whole sentence backward.
Case closed.

The Cryptograms

So far, we have looked at codes and transposition ciphers. However, the majority of the secret messages I have come across in my work as a historical
investigator are what are known as simple substitution ciphers. Popularly mislabeled “codes,” these are created by replacing the letters of the original
text, which is known as the “plaintext,” with substitutes—such as other letters, symbols, or the like—resulting in what is termed the “ciphertext.”

I have encountered—and deciphered—many such ciphertexts, written on postcards and greeting cards, in old sentiment albums, and elsewhere (Nickell 1990,
176–77). Solving a simple substitution cipher is usually pretty straightforward. (See Nickell 1990, 177; Gaines 1956, 69–87; also, the previously mentioned
Poe and Conan Doyle stories describe the rudiments of decipherment.)

Here is one message from an old autograph album:

L5CY
1992 P42
9476h M3ddl2 64w9
B457b49 C4
K2965cky

If you are an experienced cryptanalyst you might want to stop here and give your skills a try.

As it happened, however, the message was accompanied by a partial “key”:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
a e i o u t r s n

In brief, numbers are substituted for certain frequently used letters (vowels, and four of the most–used consonants), while the remaining letters are
unchanged. Now you will have no trouble deciphering the message.

If you solved this without the key, you probably noted that the last word was offset, and so it might be the name of a state (on the assumption that such a
text in an autograph album might represent a name and address). That word, omitting the numbers, was “K——cky,” and that could only be one state. Similarly
“M-ddl-” looks like the word Middle, so the cryptanalyst could begin to construct a key without having been provided one. This message reads:
“Lucy Anne Poe, North Middle Town, Bourbon Co., Kentucky.”

Most such texts are similarly mundane, although they are still fun to solve and help one sharpen his or her cryptanalytical skills. However, some are of a
more serious nature. Sometimes a code or cipher even promises to lead to a fabulous treasure, as in the next case.

Oak Island’s ‘Cipher Stone’

What is considered by some to be among “the great mysteries of the world” (Crooker 1978, 7), derives from a mysterious shaft on Oak Island, Nova Scotia. It
was allegedly discovered in 1795 when three young men came upon a shallow depression over which, hanging from a tree limb, was an old tackle block. The
trio believed some treasure lay below but they were never able to recover it. Neither has anyone since, although many have tried, only to be thwarted by
water flooding the “Money Pit” (as it came to be known) by means of “pirate tunnels” and other problems. Still, zealots are convinced there is a treasure
to be claimed, possibly the French crown jewel or Shakespeare’s manuscripts, even perhaps the legendary Holy Grail (Nickell 2001).

Reportedly, sometime in the early nineteenth century (different dates are given), a treasure-hunting consortium dug up a flat stone that bore a cryptic
message. This “cipher stone” takes its place with other such reports—of “strange markings” carved on the old tree (Finnan 1997, 28) and even of “a tier of
smooth stones . . . with figures and letters cut on them” (quoted in Crooker 1978, 24). No photo exists of any of these, and the cipher stone—assuming it
actually existed—has been missing since about 1919. However, its text has allegedly been preserved, although in various forms and differing decipherments.
Zoologist-turned-epigrapher Barry Fell thought the inscription was ancient Coptic, its message urging people to remember God lest they perish (Finnan 1997,
148–49).

Figure 2. A cipher, allegedly inscribed on a stone (see inset, bottom center), is only one of many bogus elements of the Oak Island treasure tale. (Illustration by Joe Nickell)

In fact, the cipher text as we now have it has been correctly deciphered—and redeciphered and verified. It is written in a simple-substitution cipher
(reproduced in Crooker 1993, 23). I have reconstructed what the cipher stone might have looked like, providing my drawing as an inset to my Oak Island
“treasure map” (Figure 2), based on several sources and my own visit to the island in 1999. My independent decipherment, which tallies with those of
several modern investigators (Crooker 1993, 19–24), reads, “FORTY FEET BELOW TWO MILLION POUNDS ARE BURIED.” Although he is convinced there was an original
inscribed stone, “mentioned in all the early accounts of the Onslow Company’s expedition,” William S. Crooker states (1993, 24): “Obviously the inscription
as we know it today is a hoax—a modern invention deliberately made simple to lure potential investors. It is highly unlikely that the originators of the
Money Pit left a coded message giving the amount and depth of buried treasure.”

I agree. My own longtime investigation of the Oak Island mystery, however, indicated that the “Money Pit” and “pirate tunnels” were simply natural
formations. More­­over, much of the Oak Island saga—especially certain reported actions and alleged discoveries—tally with the “Secret Vault” allegory of
Freemasonry. Indeed, the search for the Oak Island treasure “vault” has been carried out largely by prominent Nova Scotia Free­masons, and it appears that
the whole affair is an insiders’ one linked to high-level Masonic rituals (Nickell 2001, 219–34).

The foregoing by no means exhaust my examples. The interested reader might wish to consider the mysterious inscription of the Yarmouth Stone in Nova
Scotia, which I was permitted to examine in 1999 (Nickell 2001, 190–193), or the infamously un­solved Beale ciphers that tell of a treasure lost since 1817
(Nickell with Fischer 1992, 53–67), among others. More cases no doubt await.

Parrish, Thomas. 1986. The American Codebreakers: The U.S. Role in Ultra. Paperback ed. Chelsea, MI: Scarborough House, 1991.

Joe Nickell

Joe Nickell, Ph.D., is Senior Research Fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI) and "Investigative Files" Columnist for Skeptical Inquirer. A former stage magician, private investigator, and teacher, he is author of numerous books, including Inquest on the Shroud of Turin (1998), Pen, Ink and Evidence (2003), Unsolved History (2005) and Adventures in Paranormal Investigation (2007). He has appeared in many television documentaries and has been profiled in The New Yorker and on NBC's Today Show. His personal website is at joenickell.com.

Content copyright CSI or the respective copyright holders. Do not redistribute without obtaining permission. Thanks to the ESO for the image of the Helix Nebula, also NASA, ESA and the Hubble Heritage Team for the image of NGC 3808B (ARP 87).